~ “I just kind of conjured them up out of my subconscious and put them in order of ascending peculiarity.” Edward Gorey

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Of course I’m a Wes Anderson fan. What’s not to love about his quirky films? I was, however, a little skeptical when I heard he was going to undertake Fantastic Mr. Fox. But that lasted for about 3 seconds because, hey, it’s Wes Anderson.

I had in mind to paint the Mr. Fox set ever since I saw it but of course, it got wedged on the back burner. But it’s done and I’ll be back painting human beings before long. This set was a bit challenging since all the noses on the critters were all molded right onto the dolls themselves with Sculpey. It’s always a little nerve wrecking putting wood in the oven where I had to obsessively sit by and let my nose be my timer. But it came out of the oven just fine, the wood unshrunken, and my blood pressure back to normal.

There were so many characters to choose from…my favorite was Rat, voiced by Willem Dafoe, with his funky red and white Where’s Waldo sweater. Alas, due to reasons that made sense only to me, he didn’t make it into the set.

Kylie cracks me up because every now and then he’d go into a weird little trance and his eyes would go all…

Ha! That’s surrealism in an animated feature at its best.

Kristofferson, the cousin who came to stay.

And little Ash with his mask.

It was a bit difficult getting this set done on the account of my roly poly Bulldog Bo insisting on getting his back scratched whenever I sat down to paint. But it’s great having my mascot back. In Oz all I got were a few lizards that accidentally made their way into my studio with nothing to contribute. I mean, you can’t really pet a lizard the size of a paper clip, can you?